The Pittsburgh Press (May 7, 1945)
V-E Day tomorrow, British announce
Last-minute hitch delays proclamation – AP barred in Europe
By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
LONDON, England – The British Ministry of Information tonight said that tomorrow “will be treated as Victory in Europe Day.”
In Washington, President Truman said that he was withholding any announcement in reference to the surrender of enemy forces in Europe until he could complete arrangements for simultaneous statements in Washington, London and Moscow.
A German broadcast today reported the surrender of all remaining German forces in Europe. The Flensburg radio said it was making the announcement by authority of Adm. Karl Doenitz and the German High Command.
The British Ministry of Information statement said that “tomorrow, Tuesday, will be treated as Victory in Europe Day, and will be regarded as a holiday.” Prime Minister Churchill will broadcast at 3 p.m. (9 a.m. ET) tomorrow and King George at 9 p.m. (3 p.m. ET tomorrow).
EDITOR’S NOTE: A flat announcement of an unconditional German surrender was carried by the Associated Press, but not by the United Press or International News Service (Hearst). It was not carried by important foreign news services.
Allied Supreme Headquarters in Paris announced that the filing facilities of the Associated Press had been suspended throughout the European Theater of Operations.
Earlier an announcement was made that the AP’s filing privileges at SHAEF had been suspended.
AP headquarters in New York said they had no immediate statement to make.
Radio broadcasts from London shortly after noon today said that Prime Minister Churchill and President Truman were ready to announce officially the end of the war in Europe, but that Marshal Stalin “has still not agreed.”
The broadcast said that telephone conversations between the Big Three had been held this morning. The broadcast was made by Edward R. Murrow of the Columbia Broadcasting System.
The reports of German surrender started today with a German broadcast that all remaining Nazi forces have surrendered.
A speaker identified as German Foreign Minister Count Ludwig Schwerin von Krosigk announced over the Flensburg radio at 2:09 p.m. (8:09 a.m. ET) that the high command of the German Armed Forces had surrendered unconditionally all “fighting German troops” today.
The order for surrender was given by Doenitz, the broadcast said. It came on the 2,074th day of the European War.
Though the surrender order was not confirmed immediately, it presumably covered the almost one million German troops still holding out in Norway, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Yugoslavia, the French coast and the Channel Islands.
Only an hour earlier, the BBC, in its Danish service, broadcast a report that the Norwegian garrison had capitulated. Speedy confirmation of the surrender of the other German forces was expected.
Schwerin von Krosigk’s announcement was carried over the German station at Flensburg on the German-Danish border. Though behind the Allied lines, Flensburg was declared an open city by the Germans earlier this week and apparently has not been occupied by Allied forces.
A transcript of von Krosigk’s remarks was recorded by BBC and rushed to 10 Downing St., where the British Cabinet was in session under Prime Minister Churchill.
The greater proportion of German forces already was in Allied hands following piecemeal surrenders along the Western Front. The German armies in Northern Italy surrendered last Wednesday, those in Denmark, Holland and Northwest Germany on Saturday and those in Western Austria Sunday.
Details of the surrender of the German garrison in Norway were lacking, but Stockholm dispatches said Hans Thomsen, German Ambassador to Sweden, was believed to have delivered the documents of capitulation to Allied legations in the Swedish capital this morning.
Thomsen was said to have journeyed across the Swedish-Norwegian border to Lillehammer last night to confer with Gen. Franz Boehme, German commander in Norway, and Reich Commissar Josef Terboven.
Arrangements for the surrender presumably were completed at the Lillehammer conference. Included in the capitulation presumably were between 200 and 300 German submarines and a number of surface warships that had sought refuge from Allied bombs in Norwegian fjords.
The surrender was believed to have been made jointly to the United States, Britain and Russia. BBC said Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery rejected a German offer to surrender to the Western Allies alone and informed the enemy that any offer must be to Russia as well.
Vidkun Quisling, premier of the Norwegian puppet government, and other high Nazi leaders also held lengthy conferences at the Royal Castle at Oslo over the weekend, Stockholm said.
There were some reports that the Germans were seeking to arrange to surrender en masse to neutral Sweden for internment. German soldiers have been surrendering in large groups to Sweden for a number of months.
Informed Czechoslovak sources in London said it was “entirely possible” that tank vanguards of Lt. Gen. George S. Patton’s U.S. Third Army already were in Prague this afternoon.
The Czechs said they had reliable information that Gen. Patton’s forces were only 12½ miles from Prague at 6 a.m. However, they added that German troops on the west bank of the Vltava River bisecting the capital, were between the Americans and Czech patriots in the eastern portion of the city.
The eastern or newer part of Prague was said to be held firmly by the patriots. Thus, the Germans out on the west bank faced imminent entrapment between the patriots and the Third Army.
Official American accounts of the Third Army’s progress ran far behind those from patriot sources.
A dispatch from the Third Army front said three columns were converging on Prague. One was 50 miles southwest of the capital after capturing Pilsen, home of the giant Skoda arms works.
Another, from the 4th Armored Division, advanced 25 miles to Brez, 48 miles southwest of Prague and 24 miles southeast of Pilsen, and a third, also from the 4th Armored Division, entered Boschowitz, 52 miles southwest of Prague and 41 miles southeast of Pilsen.
All three columns were meeting little or no resistance.
German broadcasts admitted that the Russians had burst through the Nazi lines 130 miles east of Prague.
The U.S. Fifth Army joined in the final assault on the southeastern redoubt with an invasion of Austria through the Alpine passes east of Brenner from Northern Italy, roughly 100 miles from the Third Army’s southern flank.
The Red Army virtually completed the conquest of Germany’s Baltic coast with the clearing of Ruegen Island, a mile off the Mecklenburg shore and 35 miles southeast of Denmark.